Search

SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY A PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+! For a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an ad-free version of The Paracast, the exclusive After The Paracast podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, plus show transcripts, the new Paracast+ Video Channel, Classic Episodes and Special Features categories! We now offer lifetime memberships! You can subscribe via this direct link:https://www.theparacast.com/plus/

Onbeat/Offbeat Broadcaster

Gene, I am breaking a very long silence on the Forum because I feel it necessary to point out in public, as I did in private correspondence with you, that "David Halperin's" theories actually go back to C.G. Jung, who published a book about UFO's as an extension of the mind back in the 50's. David Halperin was a teenager at the time. These theories clearly originated with Jung, not David Halperin. In your correspondence you told me that Halperin had acknowledged that he was influenced by Jung on this topic. But during the show, itself, I heard only two mentions in passing of the name Jung, and in neither case did Halperin clearly admit the influence Jung had had on him on this subject or that these theories had actually originated with Jung.

Interestingly, C.G. Jung was the son of a Zurich Protestant pastor and was raised in a religious environment. He was also a spiritual man and very open to the paranormal, himself. Not surprising, then, that Halperin would be interested in Jung's writings and be influenced by them.

Perhaps David Halperin will credit C.G. Jung in his new book, as he should do. But as far as the Paracast show is concerned, this attribution was missing. Bad form.

Forum Super Hero

Onbeat/Offbeat Broadcaster

Yes, Gene, the name was mentioned, but I heard nothing resembling a "credit" or "attribution" from David Halperin. The implication was that the ideas were his own. This is what put my nose out of joint, as the Brits say. If I missed something, I will stand corrected.
PS Perhaps this came up in After The Paracast, which I admittedly did not hear (yet). As I said, if I'm in error, I will admit it.

Onbeat/Offbeat Broadcaster

Gene, I have just listened to After The Paracast from September 1. At 27:00 into the show you made a very brief reference to "The Collective Unconscious". You attributed it to C.G. Jung, but there is otherwise no mention whatsoever of Jung having influenced David Halperin. My original comments stand. Halperin's ideas about UFOs originating in the psyche are not his, they are those of C.G. Jung. It is the duty of any serious author or journalist to attribute or credit sources. Halperin has failed to do this here for whatever reason. As a journalist with more than 50 years experience, I would call this "unethical".

Deities, conspiracies, politics, space aliens: you don't actually have to believe in these to find them interesting. Just focus your attention not on the things themselves, but in how other people regard them, what they say when they talk about them, and why they think about them the way they do.

Paranormal Adept

Gene, I have just listened to After The Paracast from September 1. At 27:00 into the show you made a very brief reference to "The Collective Unconscious". You attributed it to C.G. Jung, but there is otherwise no mention whatsoever of Jung having influenced David Halperin. My original comments stand. Halperin's ideas about UFOs originating in the psyche are not his, they are those of C.G. Jung. It is the duty of any serious author or journalist to attribute or credit sources. Halperin has failed to do this here for whatever reason. As a journalist with more than 50 years experience, I would call this "unethical".

Deities, conspiracies, politics, space aliens: you don't actually have to believe in these to find them interesting. Just focus your attention not on the things themselves, but in how other people regard them, what they say when they talk about them, and why they think about them the way they do.

"Although he cites Jung’s classic Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky frequently and approvingly, Clarke conveys almost nothing of the depth and richness of Jung’s conception of the UFO. (Or of myth. Clarke’s own understanding of myth, taken from the Oxford English Dictionary, is far more simplistic.) He represents Jung as having said that the “psychological core of the myth” is summed up in the X-Files phrase “I want to believe.” But that’s not what Jung was saying at all.

"Jung’s point, rather, was that the UFOs are something from deep in our unconscious which we don’t “want to believe,” in fact don’t believe, but which force themselves through their own energies into our awareness. Which makes them, as myths, the deepest truths of all.

There are a few more references to Jung on his website. I don't know, maybe Halperin supposes that the primacy of Jung's views is so well known that it doesn't need to be mentioned very often? For example, if someone touted a theory that the unconscious is behind much human behavior, how often would Freud's origination of this theory have to be mentioned?

Onbeat/Offbeat Broadcaster

Thanks for the articulation of the issue. Nice to know that Jung has been credited at least somewhere by David Halperin, albeit indirectly. But my point is very specific: We have a man who has written a new book about the psychological and spiritual aspects of the UFO phenomenon, but without giving any credit or attribution to the origin of the idea when he appeared on a mass medium, The Paracast. This is conventional courtesy and normal literary/journalistic form. Any scientific or academic paper requires it. At least in the case of The Paracast, Halperin has failed to do this. Perhaps David Halperin feels he is above this. As I said: bad form, the Freudian reference notwithstanding. There is really no defense.